UFC 118 – My Thoughts On Couture vs. Toney


UFC 118 is this Saturday.
To much of the MMA community, this has to be one of those “what were you smoking?” events.

Notice the lack of expression on Toney's face. Hint: He knows.

On one hand we have Randy Couture. He’s The Natural. He’s Captain America. He’s 5 time UFC Champion and he’s taken down Vitor Belfort, Chuck Liddell, Tim Sylvia, Gabriel Gonzaga – all during a time when people were saying he should retire. Damn man.

Randy Couture: Fighter, Lover, Olympian, UFC Hall Of Famer, Champion. Wow. Just… wow.

Oh my god he's gonna kill Toney

Admittedly, I know little about James Toney.

I know that he…

  1. is huge. Which helps.
  2. proved to the world that Roy Jones Jr. can knock people out <– and as a result…
  3. …is in one of my Fight Night video games.
BlackBeltClub_James_Toney

Not Pictured: James Toney winning

But beyond that, not a very impressive resume.

I watched one of the videos UFC released on Youtube. It’s a montage of James Toney training and badmouthing Randy Couture.

It hurts plain and simple to see this guy talk trash when you know that his training probably won’t back him up come UFC 118. I look at his punches. Angry, drunken, woman-like punches. In short, Toney is just not a very impressive guy. Sometimes I forget he used to be heavyweight champ in boxing. He moves slow, punches weird, sweats from his cleavage… *sigh* Check out the vid if you have time.

I kinda hope Toney will win actually. People are giving him no credit or chance whatsoever. Not that it’s unfounded either. On the one hand, it’d be nice to see an underdog win, but on the other, this is the underdog that has talked a lot of trash about Couture. I mean how could you do that? He’s Randy Couture man!

That being said. I’ll voice the obvious.

Toney is not going to win. He’s going to lose. Hard.

This is his MMA debut, let alone UFC debut and Dana White is giving him freaking Randy Couture. Dana White must hate him a lot. And he probably wants it to stick it to boxing.

Boiling it down, we have a pure striker facing a world-class, Olympic-caliber wrestler who has experience dealing with top notch strikers. I’m thinking Couture dirty boxes with Toney but ultimately ends up shooting a very easy double, parking himself in mount so that he can land a fusillade of elbows and knuckles. Toney will sit and take it.

The only chance Toney has would be to land flush on Couture’s chin. Truth be told, I don’t think that’s too far-fetched an outcome. I’m telling you, Toney is practicing that move a billion times right now. And he better.

Dear Mr. James Toney.

This is for you, you might need it:

UPDATE: Mr. James Toney evidently didn’t take my advice OR the video seriously.


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